Pokémon:Virtual Reality
by Lady Nightwings
Summary: I suck at summaries. Read and see.


Chapter 1. Wishes

_It began with a wish._

_Before, there was only chaos. Then, the first appeared; a creature so pure it drove the darkness away from itself. The creature made a wish, and from itself two and three appeared. The two wished, and matter came to be. The three wished, and spirit came to be._

_And so the worlds were formed. The universe had begun. Though the worlds had their differences and difficulties, ours and their world avoided conflict, neither aware of the existence of the other._

_But as the life forms of both worlds evolved rapidly, it would be mere moments in time's eternity before the truth was unveiled, the boundary shattered, the worlds collided._

Max Petalburg sighed and pulled himself away from the screen. Reaching beneath his thick glasses, he rubbed his brown eyes and sank back in his chair, yawning. On the desk lay piles of forgotten research papers he was supposed to have been filing for the professor, who was none too organised. But what was on the computer screen was far removed from the calculated certainty of science and logic.

It was an email with an attached article pulled from a Pokémon news network. It was mainly a series of stories about other worlds and strange appearances, probably invented by people with too much time on their hands. But it was the photo that accompanied the article that interested Max. Too clear to be fake, it was a photo of what seemed to be a city – a city _floating on water._ Its buildings were packed impossibly close together; in fact they seemed to run into one another. They didn't seem to have any meaning, just grey blocks with windows… and numbers on them. Carved, painted, embossed, numbers covered the bizarre buildings. And that sky… The whole thing just looked too abstract to be real in any way, save for the one person in the photo; a man, standing with his back to the camera.

He was standing on the water.

Below the article, a note written by the anonymous sender said:

You still think there's nothing weird going on?

It still could have been made up. Max had always been a realistic, facts-and-figures kind of person, but a part of him still held on to fairytales and dreams, a part of him he had at times tried to file away with Professor Birch's research. But then his mind would drift away, to a star-filled sky, a wordless lullaby, a sleepy-eyed wish-maker…

He felt for the tiny shard of violet crystal that hung around his neck, and a small smile creased his tired face. He scrolled through the text and something caught his eye.

_The boundary grows ever thinner as our worlds draw near…The sky splits, and the balance of the world is disrupted…_

Okay, so strange things had been happening recently, Max admitted to himself. Wild and tame Pokémon alike had been behaving oddly, and there were odd signals popping up on TV broadcasts and satellite images. Even the air seemed to have a different feel about it, something new and unknown. But ten years ago, many people had seen UFOs. This was nothing…was it?

_Chaos will reign once more…The Shadow of Arceus will-_

Max suppressed a contemptuous snort and closed the article. Shadow of Arceus… That was little more than a story to scare little kids.

A scraping sound at the window made him whirl around, but all he saw was Vigoroth scratching the glass.

"Hey, Vigoroth, cut that out."

But his Pokémon ignored him. And then Max realised how agitated it was, even for a Vigoroth, who were prone to being hyper.

"V…viiig…"

Something was wrong, very wrong. Max took out its Pokéball and slowly advanced towards it. The Vigoroth snarled and swiped the red-and-white ball out of his hand, nearly taking his fingers off as well. Cursing, he clutched his hand to himself, and crawled over to the first aid kit on the wall. A sudden violent trembling in his pocket made him stop. A brilliant flash of white light blinded him, and his other Pokémon, Ralts, Lairon and Banette, ran to the window, snarling as though preparing to fight.

Rushing to save the desk from Lairon's swinging steel tail, Max finally saw what was making his friends act so strangely.

The sky was opening up.

Or rather, there seemed to be some kind of hole in it, like a black hole, and it was very slowly expanding. It was about the size of the moon, from where Max could see, but how far away it was, or how big it was, he had no idea.

_The sky splits…The boundary…balance of the world…_What the hell did it all mean?


End file.
